Principal's Message

Principal's Message

To The School Community,

Welcome to the 2023 School year! I hope that during the time you have had together with your families and friends over the summer brought you closer together, meant you had some exciting adventures and hopefully some time with friends and family.

For me it is exciting to be back, and I am very grateful for the warm welcome I have received upon my return from Laverton P-12 College. Spending time at Laverton was a very rewarding experience for me. I have definitely enabled growth in my leadership while focussing on different areas of growth the school needed, guiding the community through a review and working with secondary school students for the first time as a principal.

I am sure that you will join me in expressing gratitude to Carmen Britnell, who in her time at BHPS has added significant value to our school and community. I have admiration for Carmen and her leadership shaping some of our future directions with the students, staff and School Council. The team and community at Moriac PS are lucky to have her and I would like to wish her all of the best in her future leadership positions.

The students at our school are what makes BHPS a great school (see our 2022 Year 6 Graduates above). I have confidence in their capabilities, character strengths, values and actions that will contribute to another successful year at our school. Our school performance data has fluctuated over the past few years with our 2021 measures categorising us as an INFLUENCE school, the highest rating based on a range of measures, in 2022 our rating is to RECHARGE meaning some of our performance measures have declined. I want you to know we will be responding to this in a variety of ways that I will delve more deeply into this in subsequent newsletters. Priority ONE is to maximise attendance at school, I will touch on this further on in my messages.) 

You will also find info regarding:

1.Parent Teacher Info Sharing Sessions

2.A list of staff at the school

3.Some brief information about communication platforms at our school.

As principal of the school, I want you to know that every decision made at the school has the student's needs at the centre. It is my sincere goal to do my best for every student and lead the staff at the school to do the same.

Community Members

Each new school year brings with it the opportunity to welcome new community members to our school, students, their families and the staff. We have a number of new families joining the school this year as well as some new staff members. You can see a list in the Admin and School Leaders Section of the newsletter

Term One Parent Information Sharing Sessions

During Week 3 of this term, you will have an opportunity to meet with your child's teacher for an information sharing meeting. Although the teachers may share some initial insights the meeting is a relationship building exercise where the teacher will encourage you to share important things about your child.

Please keep a look out on Compass and check the key dates in the newsletter for further information about booking a time and what information to prepare.

If you would like to book an appointment with your child’s teacher or any of the specialist teachers, please do this via Compass Conference bookings. 

Communication to the Community

Communicating to you in a clear and timely manner is important to us as a team at school. The main forms of communication to you will be via:

1. Fortnightly Newsletter 
2. Information on our School Website 
3. Information via Compass, including posts, excursion information and the Compass Calender which will be updated and current for you to refer to and know key dates like school terms and curriculum days, camps and off-site excursions.
4. The school does have a Facebook page that is used to share snapshots taken on excursions or at events but NB this forum will not be used as a communication tool for information or dates etc.

An IMPORTANT ACTION for all families is to ensure that they have their Compass log in detail. If you think you don't or can't remember them, please contact the office for assistance.

Attendance at School 

Absence from school is proven to be the first hurdle we face as students, parents and schools to maximise student growth. 

One of the factors of our decline in data in 2022 is the attendance data that must be a whole of community focus this year. Although this data is a small part of the picture that includes refining elements of reading, writing, maths and spelling it will be a starting point.

Below is a snapshot of the patterns over the past 5 years. You will also notice we have 87% of students still have 100% attendance so far this year. What our aim needs to be is to minimise the number of students in the grey and black sections of the data. 

When analysing the 2022 data down to the individual student level it was clear that the correlation between academic growth and attendance is a real one. For the most part high levels of attendance meant expected or high growth and high levels of absence meant growth below the expected level. 

It is important to dispel the myth that this data is linked only to holidays taken by families (which is still a significant factor) but it is also unexplained and medical illness.

My main hope in increasing attendance is that students and families share any "school-based matter" that might be hindering attendance e.g Friendship, Learning difficulties, Bullying, Online interactions etc so we can proactively support the students. 

In the coming weeks you will notice increased communication from your child's teacher if absences hit certain thresholds for your children. 

School Council Elections

Please remember to nominate for the Three vacant positions available for parents to join School Council. Refer to the Compass Post from last week.

BHPS Gold Standard Behaviours 

The students at BHPS are a wonderful bunch with many varying needs and experiences and often grappling with the routines at school. To fine tune this for consistency across the school, year levels and specialist subjects we are launching into implementing Gold Standard Behaviours and enhanced our response to behaviours 

Enjoy the weekend with your families!

Daniel Vella